COLUMN: While not as weird, M. Ward beats W. Al on Biblical scale
To combat the ripples of ridiculousness and bad taste that are surging through the universe as a result of this week’s new Weird Al release, I introduce Merge Records’ very own M. Ward.
M. Ward has built a name for himself by stripping mope rock of all its emo pretention and cliché and filling it instead will all kinds of blues and folk forms.
From his breakthrough release, “The End of Amnesia” to his most recent disc, “Post-War,” Ward has crafted and honed an almost timeless sound that wouldn’t have been out of place at the turn of the last century.
His songs are almost Biblical in their scope, full of yellowed pages, creaking floorboards, and aging willow trees.
A listen through an M. Ward disc is growing a nostalgia for something you never knew you’d missed. And when he sings in “Vincent O’Brien,” that “he only sings when he’s sad, and he’s sad all the time so he sings,” you believe him. And you sing along. And you cry.
Loss and hope pervade Ward’s whole catalog, and they are constantly buoying each other, maintaining a perilous balance that seems as if it’s about to collapse.
Add to this lyrical tension a folk style that borrows as much from Tom Waits as from Tom Paxton and you have a collection of songs that, while simple and even sometimes barren, are altogether affecting and beautiful.
M. Ward’s voice, a husky, distinct baritone, only adds to the nostalgic effect. His records almost feel anachronistic playing on anything other than a gramophone, but while he sounds old, he never sounds outdated.
Instead, he breathes life into an otherwise dying musical form by tying into those strands of human experience that never change. The result is a crushingly beautiful catalog that isn’t afraid to mope, laugh, or cry.
And,even at its worst, it’s a head above Weird Al.
Zach Pendleton is the Statesman music know-it-all. Comments questions and
suggestions can be sent
to zpendleton@cc.usu.edu.